Westminster is both the legal and the spiritual mother of New Zealand's Parliament. But just at the moment, it looks to be ripping itself apart. Where she goes, will we go? Where she falls, will we fall?
We all know the debt (in both the positive and negative sense) that our society owes to British colonisation. Sure, the development of an independent sense of "being a Kiwi", helped along by the Maori renaissance and a healthy dose of overt nation building by the last Labour-led Government, means that we are no longer just a country of South-Seas Britons. But the imprint of our colonial legacy remains everywhere to see – from the Union Jack in the corner of our flag to teams called "the Highlanders" and "the Crusaders" representing Te Wai Pounamu in the Super 14.
Nowhere is our society's path of dependence more evident than in our parliamentary arrangements. The fundamental constitutional concept of parliamentary sovereignty was forged in the 17th Century battle between the Stuart Kings and the UK Parliament. If you want to discover what privileges our House of Representatives enjoys, you'll have to refer back to those possesed by the UK House of Commons as of 1 January, 1865. The parliamentary offices of "Speaker", "Serjeant-At-Arms" and "Usher of the Black Rod" reflect roles and traditions invented hundreds of years ago on the banks of the Thames.
All of which is to say that not only are the Houses of Parliament at Westminster the legal mother of New Zealand's Parliament, but they continuously have provided both a practical and a principled inspiration for us half a world away.
That may be why the current implosion of Westminster's institutions holds such a morbid fascination for us here in Aotearoa-New Zealand. Sure, there's a fair amount of schadenfreude in seeing politicians of any nationality squirm. But the close linkage between our Parliament and Westminster makes it a bit like watching a car crash in slow-motion, when it's your cousin behind the wheel. And it also raises the question of what, if anything, Britain's current travails mean for us.
It looks unlikely that the immediate issue wrenching Westminster apart – the extremely self-serving application of the rules governing MP's personal expenses – will arise here, despite some local attempts to fan the flames. Our real problem with parliamentary expenses is not so much individual MPs enriching themselves, as political parties using this money to entrench their positions in Parliament. This is one of the more pressing matters the upcoming review of electoral funding will have to address.
Nor has New Zealand seen anything like the repeated and serious allegations of corruption levelled at individual British lawmakers. Sure, Taito Phillip Field is in the dock over the tiling of his house, and some of Winston Peter's behaviour raised eyebrows. But that is nothing compared to the "cash for questions", or even "cash for legislation", scandals seen in the UK.
So while there's no great love for individual MPs in this country, they haven't given the public quite the same reason to outright loathe them as have their UK colleagues.
Instead, any lesson that Britain may have for us lies not in the personal foibles of our MPs, but more in the shortcomings of the Westminster parliamentary model. As The Guardian has editorialised;
[T]he expenses crisis is not simply a set of personal failings and transgressions, occasionally exaggerated. That is why it is not enough to call for heads to roll. The deeper problem is systemic. It is rooted in the whole way we do our politics. A general election is certainly not irrelevant to addressing that problem; but it is not a fundamental solution either. In the end, we need a new politics more than we need a new government.
One might argue that New Zealand had its own momentary crisis of confidence in the Westminster system in the early 1990s, which we answered with the introduction of MMP. I'm certainly one of those who thinks that this change, plus the alterations to parliamentary procedure adopted in its wake, have been generally positive for our political culture.
But our post-MMP era politics don't mean our governments have stopped treating Parliament as no more than an inconvenient roadblock to "getting things done". Most recently, the National-led government has decided to get the Associate Local Government Minister, John Carter, to chair the select committee hearings into the Auckland super city legislation he was intimately involved in designing. There goes any pretence whatsoever that this committee will be able to check the government's preferred policy in a real fashion.
It's this sort of casual abuse of process – which then produces silly Opposition tactics like Labour's recent attempted filibuster of the House – that really drags politicians into disrepute. It's hard to convince the country that you deserve much in the way of respect when the future governance of a third of the country becomes just another football in a parliamentary game of one-upmanship.
So sure, allegations that MPs lined their own pockets at the public expense have been the spark for Britain's current conflagration. But it is the slow, gradual piling up of the fuel of public contempt for what they do – and what they don't do – that
is really feeding those flames. Perhaps that is another lesson we could try taking from the Mother of all Parliament's.
Comments (5)
I liked this passage from the UK judgment albeit in the context of summing up the Tribunal approach to the information requests made under the FOIA (a statutory framework)
House of Commons v Information Commssioner [2008] EWHC 1084 (Admin):
“We have no doubt that the public interest is at stake. We are not here dealing with idle gossip, or public curiosity about what in truth are trivialities. The expenditure of public money through the payment of MPs’ salaries and allowances is a matter of direct and reasonable interest to taxpayers. They are obliged to pay their taxes at whatever level and on whatever basis the legislature may decide, in part at least to fund the legislative process. Their interest is reinforced by the absence of a coherent system for the exercise of control over and the lack of a clear understanding of the arrangements which govern the payment of ACA. Although the relevant rules are made by the House itself, questions whether the payments have in fact been made within the rules, and even when made within them, whether the rules are appropriate in contemporary society, have a wide resonance throughout the body politic. In the end they bear on public confidence in the operation of our democratic system at its very pinnacle, the House of Commons itself. The nature of the legitimate public interest engaged by these applications is obvious.”
As we know Parliament is except from the OIA here. However it would be interesting to see how Parliament here responded to the above reasoning regarding its own system of allowances and payments particularly the party support allocations. Its secretiveness is very unbecoming. There is no reason why Parliament itself could not adopt a comprehensive system of individual disclosure. The UK controversy has included the support allocation (Short and Cranborne money).
It would appear the current Speaker is playing the personal privacy card which only remotely applies to support allocations.
On the matter of Parliamentary tactics over local government reform in Auckland:
“Most recently, the National-led government has decided to get the Associate Local Government Minister, John Carter, to chair the select committee hearings into the Auckland super city legislation he was intimately involved in designing. There goes any pretence whatsoever that this committee will be able to check the government's preferred policy in a real fashion.
It's this sort of casual abuse of process – which then produces silly Opposition tactics like Labour's recent attempted filibuster of the House – that really drags politicians into disrepute”
Of course the appointment of Hon John Carter to the Select Committee and National’s stated desire to support him for Chairman, followed Labour’s parliamentary tactics on this issue it did not precede it. What is clear is that Labour’s interest was to illustrate poor parliamentary management by the Government, it had little to do with the issue at stake – Labour supports a unitary authority for Auckland. Its areas of concern are going to a Select Committee and Hide has indicated openess on electoral arrangements for the new Council excluding Maori seats. Given the scale of the transformation to occur in Auckland and the timeframe and given the fact that Labour has decided not to facilitate the process in anyway, it’s not surprising there is a special select committee. The political consequence for not meeting the Government’s stated timetable (having stated it) would be dire on both the Government’s fortune and on Auckland local government.
Chris,
It's a tough one about whether individual MP's personal expenses should fall under the OIA. I note the previous Speaker, Margaret Wilson, thought that they should. And it is hard to argue against transparency as a general principle. But on the other hand, you just know how this would be used by political opponents and the media ... "MP X spent how much on his meal on the 16th of June? Oh la de da ... isn't he a wastral!" I can't help but wonder if our politics aren't already individual obsessed enough without adding this extra element to it.
The party support entitlements are, I think, different. And I think these should be much more transparent than at present.
On the Labour filibuster/John Carter appointment - you are right that I implied a false cause & effect between these two particular matters. My more general point, however, is that repeated abuses of parliamentary process by both Labour and National governments encourages abuses by the opposition, which for the non-political junky turns Parliament into a rather silly sideshow. Appeals to the "dignity" of its role in our constitution then become a little hard to sustain, and when something like the expenses scandal comes along, there is no revesoir of trust/respect to sustain it as an institution.
t's a tough one about whether individual MP's personal expenses should fall under the OIA. ... But on the other hand, you just know how this would be used by political opponents and the media ... " ... I can't help but wonder if our politics aren't already individual obsessed enough without adding this extra element to it.
We seem to manage perfectly fine with questions about Ministers' expenses, or the expenses of CEOs of Government Departments or SOEs - already subject to the OIA.
If MPs are so concerned about the publication minutiæ of their expenditure from their personal MP expense allowances, they should bit the bullet, abolish the allowance and make a one-off increase in their salaries.
Andrew, personally, I'd favour a ladies'/gentlemen's agreement to keep the bagging of finances for the media and the bloggers. I think it would be worth the usually appalling coverage of this sort of thing from the media just for politicians to feel a little less entitled to the public pursestrings. I don't even mind if it's a reveal of expenses going forward, so long as it gets done and without loopholes.
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